AP: Drones, forces set for possible Libya strike
Jackson Sun
Libyan military guards check one of the burned-out buildings at the U.S. Consulate complex in Benghazi, Libya, three days after the Sept. 11 assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, including two guards at a CIA base about a mile from the consulate. / Mohammad Hannon, AP
Armed drones are flying over northern Africa, and U.S. special forces are on call, ready to attack if the Obama administration can identify who was behind the deadly Sept. 11 assault on the American Consulate in Libya, officials tell the Associated Press.
AP writes that the White House "is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaeda is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group's profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa."
AP bases its report on three current officials, a former Obama administration official and an outside analyst who said administration officials "have approached him asking for help in connecting the dots to Mali," where al-Qaeda-linked rebels seized the northern half of the country in spring.
"The civilian side is looking into doing something, and is running into a lot of push-back from the military side," the Washington-based analyst told AP. "The resistance that is coming from the military side is because the military has both worked in the region and trained in the region. So they are more realistic."
The key suspects are members of the Libyan militia group Ansar al-Shariah. The group has denied responsibility, but eyewitnesses saw Ansar fighters at the consulate, and U.S. intelligence intercepted phone calls after the attack from Ansar fighters to leaders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, bragging about it. The affiliate's leaders are known to be mostly in northern Mali, where they have seized a territory as large as Texas following a coup in the country's capital.
But U.S. investigators have only loosely linked "one or two names" to the attack, and they lack proof that it was planned ahead of time, or that the local fighters had any help from the larger al-Qaeda affiliate, officials say.
If that proof is found, the White House must decide whether to ask Libyan security forces to arrest the suspects with an eye to extraditing them to the U.S. for trial, or to simply target the suspects with U.S. covert action.
U.S. officials say covert action is more likely. The FBI couldn't gain access to the consulate until weeks after the attack, so it is unlikely it will be able to build a strong criminal case. The U.S. is also leery of trusting the arrest and questioning of the suspects to the fledgling Libyan security forces and legal system still building after the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
On Friday, Reuters reported that after the attack on the Benghazi complex, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the CIA abandoned an intelligence-gathering site about a mile away that was also attacked. Two of the three were killed there by a mortar shell, sources told Reuters.
"The publication of satellite photos showing the site's location and layout have made it difficult, if not impossible, for intelligence agencies to reoccupy the site," Reuters writes. About 40 personnel escaped to the Benghazi airport, the sources said.
The previously secret post had been used for gathering information on the proliferation of weapons stolen from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles. The sources told Reuters the post's security features included some fortifications, sensors and cameras, which were more advanced than those at the villa where Stevens died.
The existence of the CIA base emerged last week at a hearing by the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is investigating whether security lapses contributed to the attack.
Separately, Reuters reports today that the State Department suspected that two Libyans hired to guard the Benghazi Consulate were involved in an April incident attack in which a homemade bomb was hurled over the wall of the mission.
Update at 7:31 p.m. ET: The communications director for the House Oversight Committee emailed to emphasize that a State Department official showed a commercial satellite photo of the Consulate "annex" at last week's hearing, which Reuters' Friday article points out. No one at the open hearing described it as a "CIA base," a term used by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank in an opinion piece, "Letting us in on a secret," which Reuters also referenced. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and the committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., objected to the display of the image.